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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 7006541" data-attributes="member: 87792">It's the 3.X family that really ties you down. The most egregious example that springs to mind is that in 3.X <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#constructType" target="_blank">the Construct type of monsters</a> are immune to critical hits and thus precision damage. So you can't use precision damage to take apart a clockwork monster.3.X worked as a game if you treated it as a continuation and rationalisation of what had gone before and let the assumptions built in by Gygax do the heavy lifting. Where it failed was when it was taken on its own terms and attempting to be used as a simulationist tool for worldbuilding. Come in with a 1e or 2e mentality it works in the same way that Unearthed Arcana works.When 4e came out we were excited and started the same process. But the math was all different. Spellcasting as we knew it was gone (and that is a major part of our campaign). Magic item distribution was different. Monsters lost abilities or had new abilities. PCs had a slew of new abilities. And combat became even more complicated and mini dependent when we were already shifting the other way. Pathfinder was an option, but the reality was that we didn't see a point. We had our D&D game, our campaign world. We didn't need a new campaign world, and the rules themselves were virtually identical. We've rarely added new PC races or classes, so that appeal wasn't there either. You've just reverse engineered what was a great and underused tool in 4e <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Compared to most of the other RPGs I couldn't disagree more.And here I found the opposite. The slew of campaign settings released only showed how bad D&D was for modifying because of the way it's all kludged together into something that works despite the aesthetics. Starting with Dragonlance and the simple removal of clerics meaning that until they turned up you needed things like the Obscure Death Rule. Then moving on to e.g. Planescape and the way you needed to track how far you were from your home plane. For me the whole thing feels like nails on a chalkboard.And this is a difference of approach. I'll use whatever software I think helps the most. And I'll wince whenever I see someone try and create a spreadsheet in Word, or worse yet, an "Excel Database". I'm the same way with gaming systems.And my answer to that is "You are what you do". It's a strong philosophical statement and one that can be argued but it means that the questions I start is "Why is something there, what is it, and what is it doing?" A slight difference from your approach - but at many levels only a slight one.  And "What is it doing" is not based round "How does it fight". It's "What is it doing there? How and why did it get there?"There are however two core differences between how you do this in 4e and most other editions of D&D:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Anything that happens "offscreen" is going to be handled by DM fiat anyway. There is no need to have game mechanics for this.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Instead of flipping through the index to see how a wizard would do things and then using that spell you simply write down what you think it should do, using 4e mechanics as a markup language.</li> </ol>Me too. But making the world an interesting place is also part of the world-building process.</blockquote>

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